|
| |
|
Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Monday, August 8th, 2011
Britain’s biggest estates are falling into the hands of Russian oligarchs hankering after their own slice of Brideshead Revisited. As another £100m home is put on the market, Tim Adams wonders if the rest of us will ever see over the castle walls
On the ground it is hard to get a measure of the Crichel Estate in Dorset. It takes in almost 10,000 acres, in the glorious countryside to the north of Poole harbour, near Wimborne Minster. As someone currently contemplating whether the benefits of an extra 7ft of London garden and a 10x8ft bedroom might really be worth another £100,000 of mortgage, I’m finding property on this scale quite tricky to assess.
I try walking its perimeter, but I don’t get far. In the end I find I can get a better indication of Crichel’s extent from an aerial view on YouTube: in a short film advertising the hunting possibilities of its thousands of acres, a helicopter- mounted camera swoops for several minutes around the gentle hills and valleys of the property, before dwelling on the main house itself. Crichel is a great Palladian pile that provided the backdrop for the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It was mostly built by John the Bastard, one of the noted Bastard brothers of Blandford Forum, in 1742. Its land includes three villages, a cricket club, a church and a school. All of this could, apparently, now be yours for around £100 million, making it the most expensive British property outside London ever sold.
But as with all such sales, this one – if it happens – will be magnificently discreet. Nobody in the villages on the estate seems to know for certain if the great house or land on which they live is even being offered for sale at all, though rumours have been widely reported. Some suggest – hopefully – that the property has attracted the interest of Prince Charles (who owns neighbouring land) and who “would perhaps like to purchase it for his son and his new bride”; others believe it will go to this or that oligarch to fulfil their increasing desire for English dachas to go with their London mansions; and rock stars have owned some of the land around here in the recent past – Greg Lake of Emerson Lake and Palmer had the next-door property. But it is the members of the global financial elite who can most likely afford estates like this now.
Over the past decade or so, prime land and property in Britain has increasingly shifted from ownership by those with inherited wealth to the beneficiaries of the long boom in the world’s money markets that ended in 2008. In 1980 there was a 70% likelihood that the buyer of a property such as Crichel House – or Cliveden, former seat of the Astors in Buckinghamshire and now on the market for a cool £35 million – would owe their fortune to inheritance. By 2007 that likelihood had dropped to about 11%. One consequence of globalisation has been that prime chunks of British property have been sold off from beneath our feet, as it were, to those whose wealth is offshored and whose property portfolio probably also includes a place in the Alps, the Caribbean and Dubai. Now 60% of London properties worth over £2.5m are owned by foreign investors. And the trend has spread to the country. The steel magnate Vladimir Lisin paid £6.8m for the 3,300-acre Aberuchill Castle estate in Perthshire. Boris Berezovsky bought 172-acre Hascombe Court, near Godalming in Surrey, for £10m. Roman Abramovich paid £12m for Fyning Hill, near Midhurst in West Sussex, which came complete with a personal playground of go-kart track, clay-pigeon shoot, trout lake and rifle range.
When Leon Max, a Russian-born fashion retailer, bought the 600 acres of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for £15m in 2008 from the formula one boss Lord Hesketh, he commented that “I like the idea of being a country gentleman… I am looking forward to shuffling to my atelier in my monogrammed slippers”. He is rivalled by Stefan Persson, 61, owner of H&M, who owns an 8,500-acre shooting estate in Wiltshire and the 1,500-acre Linkenholt estate near Andover in Hampshire. We sell costume drama to the world and increasingly the world – or at least that tiny percentage of it that counts its wealth in seven figures – buys a contemporary version of it back, mostly tax free and with a bit of deference and a state-of-the-art cinema room thrown in. Like Persson, Max has learned to shoot, has adopted corduroy Savile Row suits and entertains the local hunt.
Places such as Crichel House and Cliveden were built to show off the taste and trappings of the home-grown elite of past centuries, men who owed much of their wealth to the exploitation of labour and resources in distant corners of the globe. In colonising English estates now, you could say the globe is returning the compliment. It is apparently becoming hard to put a price on the “authentic experience” of the British aristocracy. At hedge fund billionaire Arki Busson’s charity ball last month one diner bid £250,000 for a weekend break at Blenheim Palace. The traditional aristocratic season of Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon, its rituals of dress and insouciance, is embraced by the global elite with similar mesmerising extravagance.
One thing that this elite may not embrace as it buys up British land, however, is the traditional conscience-salving relationship that has existed between Britain’s historic landowning families and their tenant farmers and tied cottagers. The villages of Witchampton and Moor Crichel may be sold with Crichel House. The people who live there now exhibit an understandable anxiety not only at the prospect of a new landlord, but also at the consequences of saying anything out of turn.
That anxiety seems a historical relic – like something out of Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen or even Piers Plowman – but it is real enough. One man I ask, a resident of neighbouring Cranborne, speaks to me under condition of anonymity. He describes how “this part of the world is still made up of country estates and has not changed much since Norman times and feudalism. Many of the landowners can be traced back to Norman ancestors, when Anglo-Saxon England was carved up by the invaders from Normandy. Some of the working families in Witchampton, likewise, are mentioned in documents dating from the time of Henry VIII. To live here is to experience what life was like 200 years ago.” It is that experience, with added swimming pools and helicopter pads, that makes these places so attractive to buyers who have done their homework watching Gosford Park and Brideshead Revisited. The local man went on to express the hope that “the next owner of Crichel will at least retain the current workforce (who live in “tied” accommodation – no job, no home) and maintain the area’s unique charm…”
Russians bearing guns, attracted to Crichel’s renowned pheasant shooting, may not be particularly welcome, especially as they will tend to spend only a small part of their time at the house. Celebs would probably be worse. “The last estate up for sale in Dorset was in the Purbecks,” my informant tells me. “This was bought by a financier after being viewed by Kylie. Cecil Beaton’s home, just over the border in Wiltshire, was bought by Madonna. What benefit was there to the local economy in having Madonna here? Hardly any. She brought her own entourage with her, who sourced most of the workmen and domestic staff from elsewhere. To stop cameramen photographing her house from the air, she bought up the local airfield. Her staff would try and hire restaurants for the entire evening, to exclude locals and regulars, just for herself and her cronies. Luckily they put their loyal customers before financial greed – Dorset is not a ‘Material World’…” – or at least not entirely.
One of the REASONS the British can no longer always compete to buy their own land, and why that land and property is such a safe bet for foreign investors, is coincidentally rooted in the history of Crichel House. In the “Battle of Crichel Down” of 1954, the Napier-Sturt-Marten family, who had owned the estate for 500 years, took on Churchill’s postwar government to have returned to their ownership a piece of land that had been compulsorily purchased by the RAF for bombing practice during the war. The stand-off was seen as the last redoubt of the aristocracy against parliament, and the aristocracy won. The “integrity” of the Crichel estate was restored and the government minister who had fought that losing battle, Sir Thomas Dugdale, famously resigned. Thereafter any question of land reform, of the breaking up of ancient estates for the common good was shelved.
The vast majority of land in Britain has a similar kind of “integrity”, rooted in the covenants of the Domesday Book. One of the effects of that 1,000-year status quo is to make British houses, on average, the most expensive and the smallest in Europe. Another is to ensure that, because of the scarcity of land available, estates will always be a stellar investment to those who can afford to maintain them. Kevin Cahill’s book Who Owns Britain sets out the figures pretty starkly: the UK is 60m acres in extent, and two-thirds of it is owned by 0.36% of the population, or 158,000 families. A staggering 24m families live on the 3m acres of the nation’s “urban plot” – and not surprisingly buy into the idea that Britain is a severely overcrowded country in which land is extremely scarce.
It is not quite so scarce if you happen to be the descendant of the “cousinhood” of aristocracy who carved up the nation in feudal wars or at the gambling table – or through grace and favour, and profits from slavery – and whose offspring have until recently doggedly preserved their thousands of acres from almost every subsequent threat of disbursement (if only, in some cases, to sell them intact to Russian steel magnates or Swedish T-shirt sellers). Among the diehards are the current Duke of Buccleuch, with his 240,000 acres; the Duke of Northumberland, who owns 131,000 acres; and the Duke of Westminster, with 129,000 acres taking in much of Belgravia, as well as the centre of Liverpool. To them, you imagine, the country doesn’t look very crowded at all.
Carol Wilcox, secretary and treasurer of the Labour Land Campaign, has one antidote to this persistent sense of England as a playground for the super-rich. She recently drove from her home in Christchurch down to the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival in Dorset. Her route took her along an ancient brick wall which seemed to go on for ever and, as she drove along the A31, she recalls, she was getting more and more furious about it. “What’s all this, built to keep the peasants out?” she wondered. At Tolpuddle she discovered that the wall was, in fact, the longest continuous structure in England, incorporating two million bricks, and that behind it lived the MP for South Dorset, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, who David Cameron likes to call Richard Drax. The estate is open to the public on two days a year, when the villagers make tea and cakes.
“It is just feudal, still, all this,” Wilcox suggests. She got interested in land reform when she read Mervyn King’s book on British tax. There seemed to be a glaring omission in it: land value tax. Rather than taxing income so heavily, or seeing aspiration to ownership taxed in the form of stamp duty, why not impose an annual tax on the productive value of land per acre (excluding occupied homes in the lower council tax bands), and thereby address the most glaring inequity in the country? This might allow tenants of all kinds to finally own a little patch, leading to the eventual disbursement, at fair price, of some of the millions of acres currently held in a few thousand hands. And it would mean the 40% of prime property currently being sold to often absent foreign investors would not look quite so attractive.
“I like to think about the effects of not taxing land,” says Wilcox. “House prices remain unaffordable; there is a vast amount of wasted land, derelict sites and empty property in the hands of an elite few; and nearly all private income that could be used for investment goes on servicing property debt, allowing the banks to make their massive gains. The only reason anyone should own land is to use it…”
The idea goes back a long way, to Thomas Paine through Lloyd George. Andy Burnham, the Labour leadership candidate, had it as a plank of his manifesto, but Ed Miliband, according to Wilcox “seems not to get it”. Vince Cable put forward a version at last year’s Lib Dem conference when he suggested that a progressive alternative to attempting to raise tax on global capital, routinely offshored, “is to shift the tax base to property, and land, which cannot run away, [and] represents in Britain an extreme concentration of wealth”. Traditionally whigs and Tories have clashed over land reform; you wonder if, as finances squeeze still further, that might be the fracture line again.
Britain is, of course, full of complicated nostalgia for the world of stately homes and manicured lawns, and the opposition to such a change is deep rooted, even among those it might benefit. Wilcox is fed up of hearing how the great landowners are custodians for whose stewardship we should be eternally grateful. You can hear it in the anxieties of the tenants and villagers in Dorset, who place their hope in a benevolent landlord, rather than in a stake in the ground.
As Britain’s estates change hands, it is doubtful whether similar loyalties will be extended to foreign owners flying in for the grouse season. Behind their high walls, however, once they have purchased a piece of “authentic” heritage, the new owners of British acres probably won’t worry too much about what the natives think. They will be too busy humming those famous old verses of Noël Coward: “The stately homes of England/How beautiful they stand/to prove the hedge fund billionaires still have the upper hand/though the fact that they have to be rebuilt/is a small price to pay to wear a kilt/and much more fun than buying gilts… ( to fade)”.
Posted in Environment, Features, House News, House prices, Property, Rural affairs, Russia, The Observer, UK news, World news | Comments Closed
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Co-operative living offers a not-for-profit way to avoid the property casino – here’s how one group did it
Housing co-operatives are common in many parts of the world but have never really taken off in the UK. But is that about to change? Community co-operatives have rescued pubs, shops and other vital amenities. Now, with sky-high property prices in many parts of the UK, groups of like-minded people are coming together to form co-ops to buy a property to live in – something they would never be able to do individually.
Robert Morris, 34, is one of eight people of varying ages and backgrounds about to move into a derelict former children’s care home in east London. They set up a housing co-op so they could buy a place to fulfil their dream of living together “collectively” in order to pursue a sustainable, less consumer-oriented lifestyle. Now the dream has become a reality. Planning permission has been granted for a change of use, contracts have been exchanged, and the members will be moving into the 10-bedroom detached Victorian property within a few weeks.
The eight members range in age from 30 to 68. Some are Londoners, but not all. In addition to Robert, who works as a Linux server engineer, the group includes Catherine, a teacher; Liz, associate editor for a national magazine; Phil, a permaculture gardener and community activist; Tricia, who teaches English as a foreign language; Melissa, a university lecturer; Tom, a software tester; and Charles, an industrial engineer, systems analyst and musician.
They are looking for a few more people to join them, but say only those with a genuine desire to live collectively need apply: “If you just want a room and cheap rent, this won’t be for you.” The group are aware that, for some observers, talk of creating an “intentional community” based on shared values and communal activities might conjure up images of hippy communes, religious cults and 1970s sitcom The Good Life.
It’s something the group tackle on their website: “This is not about escaping to a rural ideal or trying to create a pretend one in the city. It’s about facing the very real challenges of living sustainably in a large urban centre like London. This means a commitment to living in a different way. It also means being realistic about the challenges. It’s not an episode of Friends! Nor is it a way of getting cheap rent, having free love or joining a cult – and families and children can certainly be a part of the community.”
The co-operative paid £620,000 for the property in Walthamstow, with the purchase financed by loans from Co-operative & Community Finance (which lends to organisations owned and controlled by their members) and a linked organisation, the Co-operative Loan Fund, plus various individuals and other housing co-ops. But the bulk of the money came in the form of a 75% mortgage from Yorkshire-based Ecology building society.
Wannabe housing co-ops face a number of hurdles in setting up. Cath Muller at Radical Routes, a network of housing co-ops, says it is particularly hard to start one in London “because the property market is so skewed”.
With so many people locked out of the market, many would say a co-operative approach to property ownership makes a lot of economic sense. But the Walthamstow members say it would be misleading to view what they are doing as an alternative way for would-be first-time buyers to get a foot on the property ladder.
The Drive housing co-op has been structured as a registered not-for-profit body that owns the property and provides accommodation on a purely rental basis. Only the tenants can be members, and they will pay about £500 a month in rent to the co-op, which will be their landlord. Each member has a single £1 share, and, crucially, individual members can’t gain or lose from changes in the value of the property.
“This arrangement gives individual members the freedom to come and go if their circumstances change, while giving the co-operative as a whole continuity and stability,” says the group. The fact that people are renting rather than buying “is quite an important aspect for some of the members – indeed, a couple of them are actually getting off the property ladder”.
Any theoretical profits – for example, if the property was to be sold for more than the co-op paid for it – would go to the co-operative movement (this was a condition of the funding they received). In reality, says Morris, if everyone ended up moving out, what would probably happen is that a new group would be found to move in.
He points out that “fully mutual” housing co-ops such as theirs give people the chance to experience many of the advantages that homeowners enjoy, such as security of tenure and being able to control spending on repairs and improvements. Also, no significant upfront capital is required to join.
The co-op’s members intend to grow a significant proportion of their own food – “not just a couple of lettuces to make us feel nice” – and buy the rest from local and/or ethical suppliers. They also want to reduce their impact on the environment. Plans include growing a herb garden and learning to treat minor illnesses, organising workshops and other events and collectively reducing their meat consumption.
They are also keen to look into the possibility of selling surplus produce through “crop share” schemes. Longer term, the group would like to move “off-grid” for water and electricity, and may explore making their own solar panels or small wind turbines from second-hand materials.
So how did they all meet? A couple of the members already knew each other, and called a meeting to explore the idea. That was early last year, and things progressed from there, with several members responding to online ads.
Tricia Vickery, who at 68 is the oldest member, joined the group after seeing some information about The Drive co-op on the Radical Routes website. She got in touch and started going to the regular meetings.
Vickery, who lives just outside Nottingham, says she is really excited to be doing this at this stage of her life, and is hopefully helping to disprove the stereotype that living collectively is only for young people. “I’d like to think the co-op will benefit from my life experience. It’s a great group of people and I found it a very exciting thing to be doing. It’s not going to be easy – we’ve never lived together before – but it’s a like-mindedness that is there.”
Now single – she has been divorced for many years – Vickery spent some time living in Italy. “I’ve been trying for some years to get to London [but] the housing situation is impossible,” she says, adding: “My generation need to be thinking outside the box.”
The group had to overcome a number of obstacles to reach this stage, says Morris. It had to find a suitable property, sort out the finance, negotiate with estate agents, apply for planning permission to change the use of the building, and form an “industrial and provident society” to raise additional funds to meet some of the costs and finance the sustainability measures members want to introduce, while at the same time building up a strong group of like-minded people.
“We haven’t received any grants or handouts,” Morris adds. “It’s important to us that we pay our own way and that the whole project is self-funding and sustainable.”
Posted in Environment, Ethical and green living, Features, House News, House prices, Household bills, Housing, Money, Mortgages, Property, Renting property, Society, The Guardian | Comments Closed
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Co-operative living offers a not-for-profit way to avoid the property casino – here’s how one group did it
Housing co-operatives are common in many parts of the world but have never really taken off in the UK. But is that about to change? Community co-operatives have rescued pubs, shops and other vital amenities. Now, with sky-high property prices in many parts of the UK, groups of like-minded people are coming together to form co-ops to buy a property to live in – something they would never be able to do individually.
Robert Morris, 34, is one of eight people of varying ages and backgrounds about to move into a derelict former children’s care home in east London. They set up a housing co-op so they could buy a place to fulfil their dream of living together “collectively” in order to pursue a sustainable, less consumer-oriented lifestyle. Now the dream has become a reality. Planning permission has been granted for a change of use, contracts have been exchanged, and the members will be moving into the 10-bedroom detached Victorian property within a few weeks.
The eight members range in age from 30 to 68. Some are Londoners, but not all. In addition to Robert, who works as a Linux server engineer, the group includes Catherine, a teacher; Liz, associate editor for a national magazine; Phil, a permaculture gardener and community activist; Tricia, who teaches English as a foreign language; Melissa, a university lecturer; Tom, a software tester; and Charles, an industrial engineer, systems analyst and musician.
They are looking for a few more people to join them, but say only those with a genuine desire to live collectively need apply: “If you just want a room and cheap rent, this won’t be for you.” The group are aware that, for some observers, talk of creating an “intentional community” based on shared values and communal activities might conjure up images of hippy communes, religious cults and 1970s sitcom The Good Life.
It’s something the group tackle on their website: “This is not about escaping to a rural ideal or trying to create a pretend one in the city. It’s about facing the very real challenges of living sustainably in a large urban centre like London. This means a commitment to living in a different way. It also means being realistic about the challenges. It’s not an episode of Friends! Nor is it a way of getting cheap rent, having free love or joining a cult – and families and children can certainly be a part of the community.”
The co-operative paid £620,000 for the property in Walthamstow, with the purchase financed by loans from Co-operative & Community Finance (which lends to organisations owned and controlled by their members) and a linked organisation, the Co-operative Loan Fund, plus various individuals and other housing co-ops. But the bulk of the money came in the form of a 75% mortgage from Yorkshire-based Ecology building society.
Wannabe housing co-ops face a number of hurdles in setting up. Cath Muller at Radical Routes, a network of housing co-ops, says it is particularly hard to start one in London “because the property market is so skewed”.
With so many people locked out of the market, many would say a co-operative approach to property ownership makes a lot of economic sense. But the Walthamstow members say it would be misleading to view what they are doing as an alternative way for would-be first-time buyers to get a foot on the property ladder.
The Drive housing co-op has been structured as a registered not-for-profit body that owns the property and provides accommodation on a purely rental basis. Only the tenants can be members, and they will pay about £500 a month in rent to the co-op, which will be their landlord. Each member has a single £1 share, and, crucially, individual members can’t gain or lose from changes in the value of the property.
“This arrangement gives individual members the freedom to come and go if their circumstances change, while giving the co-operative as a whole continuity and stability,” says the group. The fact that people are renting rather than buying “is quite an important aspect for some of the members – indeed, a couple of them are actually getting off the property ladder”.
Any theoretical profits – for example, if the property was to be sold for more than the co-op paid for it – would go to the co-operative movement (this was a condition of the funding they received). In reality, says Morris, if everyone ended up moving out, what would probably happen is that a new group would be found to move in.
He points out that “fully mutual” housing co-ops such as theirs give people the chance to experience many of the advantages that homeowners enjoy, such as security of tenure and being able to control spending on repairs and improvements. Also, no significant upfront capital is required to join.
The co-op’s members intend to grow a significant proportion of their own food – “not just a couple of lettuces to make us feel nice” – and buy the rest from local and/or ethical suppliers. They also want to reduce their impact on the environment. Plans include growing a herb garden and learning to treat minor illnesses, organising workshops and other events and collectively reducing their meat consumption.
They are also keen to look into the possibility of selling surplus produce through “crop share” schemes. Longer term, the group would like to move “off-grid” for water and electricity, and may explore making their own solar panels or small wind turbines from second-hand materials.
So how did they all meet? A couple of the members already knew each other, and called a meeting to explore the idea. That was early last year, and things progressed from there, with several members responding to online ads.
Tricia Vickery, who at 68 is the oldest member, joined the group after seeing some information about The Drive co-op on the Radical Routes website. She got in touch and started going to the regular meetings.
Vickery, who lives just outside Nottingham, says she is really excited to be doing this at this stage of her life, and is hopefully helping to disprove the stereotype that living collectively is only for young people. “I’d like to think the co-op will benefit from my life experience. It’s a great group of people and I found it a very exciting thing to be doing. It’s not going to be easy – we’ve never lived together before – but it’s a like-mindedness that is there.”
Now single – she has been divorced for many years – Vickery spent some time living in Italy. “I’ve been trying for some years to get to London [but] the housing situation is impossible,” she says, adding: “My generation need to be thinking outside the box.”
The group had to overcome a number of obstacles to reach this stage, says Morris. It had to find a suitable property, sort out the finance, negotiate with estate agents, apply for planning permission to change the use of the building, and form an “industrial and provident society” to raise additional funds to meet some of the costs and finance the sustainability measures members want to introduce, while at the same time building up a strong group of like-minded people.
“We haven’t received any grants or handouts,” Morris adds. “It’s important to us that we pay our own way and that the whole project is self-funding and sustainable.”
Posted in Environment, Ethical and green living, Features, House News, House prices, Household bills, Housing, Money, Mortgages, Property, Renting property, Society, The Guardian | Comments Closed
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Falling costs plus generous feed-in tariffs mean return is higher than ever – but payback will fall in April
Are you a homeowner with some spare cash? A 20%-25% collapse in the price of rooftop solar power units in recent months has turned the government’s feed-in tariff scheme into one of the most lucrative financial propositions for households with the right sort of property.
The scheme was introduced in April 2010, when the Labour government introduced generous feed-in tariffs to encourage households to install solar photovoltaic systems. Back then, anyone spending, say, £13,000 up front to fit a 2.5kWp system to their home was paid 41.3p per kilowatt hour (kWh) generated – enough to earn them a typical annual income of £900 a year in payments, on top of a £140-a-year saving in reduced electricity bills.
It was described as a good investment because payments for each unit of electricity generated were guaranteed for 25 years, paid tax-free, and set to rise each year in line with inflation.
If you were planning to stay in your home and had a suitable roof (unshaded, at a pitch of about 40 degrees, and facing between south-east and south-west), the main question was how big a system to install – assuming you could raise the installation costs. The bigger the system, the greater the financial return.
However, you shouldn’t worry if you put off doing anything because it has emerged this week that waiting has worked in your favour.
Solar experts say that as a result of the installation costs coming down, the investment value of the scheme has become even better. These lower installation costs, an inflation-linked increase to the feed-in tariff payments and the prospect of rising electricity prices all mean the guaranteed returns are now above 10% a year, depending on how you calculate it. And if you install before next April – when new payment tariffs look set to come into force – you are guaranteed the tariffs for the next 25 years at the old rate.
Gabriel Wondrausch, who set up Exeter-based PV installer Sun Gift Solar, says the cost of systems has come down dramatically in 18 months. “We’ve been supplying PV systems for almost five years now and the prices have been on an almost continuous downward path,” he says. “A year ago we were selling a large 4kWp system for around £16,000. Today that same one is costing less than £13,000.” (Two years ago the cost would have been closer to £20,000.)
Wondrausch says the volume of sales has been a major factor in UK prices coming down, as has the reduction of feed-in tariffs in Germany, Europe’s biggest PV market. The panel manufacturers, it seems, price their panels according to the returns consumers can expect, and have been lowering prices as a result.
Solarcentury, one of the UK’s biggest solar companies, confirms the view that prices are falling. And even British Gas has reduced the price of its PV systems. A spokesman says business efficiencies and efficiencies in the supply chain mean costs have fallen by about 20% since June last year. “A typical 2.5kWp system cost around £13,383 last year,” he says. “Today it would cost around £10,450. We also need to consider that panel efficiency has increased – panels are 10% more efficient than they were.”
Wondrausch points out that the generous tariffs won’t be around for ever. In September the government is expected to unveil a new – significantly less generous – scheme for those installing PV systems after April 2012, suggesting that if you want to do it, now is the time to act.
Originally, it was thought the payments for new installations would be cut by 9% from their current level of 43.3p per kWh generated.
Solarcentury says the industry is currently awaiting publication of the government’s proposals for tariff cuts. “There is no doubt that the proposed cut for new installations from April 2012 will be higher than the planned 9%,” it predicts.
Meanwhile, if you are thinking of installing a system be prepared to spend some time researching the company you are using to carry out the work.
Cathy Debenham, who runs website YouGen.co.uk, says there is growing evidence of dubious sales tactics in the solar PV market. She recently came across one company that claimed you could make money by installing a panel on a north-facing roof, which is nonsense. The consumer group Which? warned that some claims made by firms selling solar PV could not be substantiated. Its advice is that consumers should be wary of any company that offers a quote without visiting the home to carry out a proper survey, or one that makes grandiose claims about the income you will receive.
Debenham’s site is a good starting point if you’re looking for information, or for a good installer who comes with recommendations from other users. The Energy Saving Trust site has lots of information too.
One thing to ask your chosen installer is which panels they plan to use. Wondrausch, who was one of the first to install PV panels in the UK five years ago, says the panels vary significantly in the electricity they produce – by as much as 12.5%.
Posted in Consumer affairs, Energy, Energy bills, Environment, Features, Feed-in tariffs, Home improvements, House News, Household bills, Money, Property, Renewable energy, Solar power, The Guardian | Comments Closed
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Who needs the hassle of building a Grand Designs-type eco-home when you can buy a kit to construct your own in days
In pictures: Building an off-site eco-home
Walking down a busy street in one of the smarter bits of London I spot the crane – a 35-tonne monster taking up half the road, its arm extending into the sky with what appears to be half a house dangling from it. As I get closer I hear 22-year-old Kirstie Finlayson shout “that’s my dad’s bedroom” as she points at a wall panel spinning 20ft up in the air. If I squint I can see a window and tiny spaces in it for a plug socket and light switch.
Tucker Finlayson, Kirstie’s father, is having a three-bedroom, split-level, eco-friendly home built in just two days in a tiny space just off a busy main road in West Hampstead. It has required 12 years of planning, trips to Germany, and a long and gruelling battle with the council to obtain planning permission, but construction is finally underway.
Tucker, a bass guitarist who has played double bass for decades with trad-jazz legend Acker Bilk, had owned a town house on Mill Lane since the mid-1960s but sold it to finance the new-build, cannily keeping hold of the garden. “One night I got drunk with a mate of mine who’s an architect, and he suggested I build a house at the end of the garden. It’s amazing what one drunken night can lead to,” he adds, pointing at the crane, lorry and house being built in front of us.
Finlayson first applied for planning permission in November 1999 and was finally granted it in December 2009. “It became a little game with the council. It was fun. I had to eliminate everything they objected to, one by one, until there was nothing left for them to object to.”
He opted for an eco-home, not only because he cares about the environment but because he is having it built for his daughter, making it a home for the future in many ways. It has been manufactured in Germany by Meisterstück Haus (MH), using pre-built panels that can be screwed and bolted together in just days, though the preparatory work before and finishing afterwards will add months to the timeframe.
“I wanted an eco-house without a Grand Designs budget,” Finlayson says – citing the popular TV show, where homes of the future are often built at vast expense, as his main inspiration. “I saw an energy-efficient home on the programme but it had cost the guy a fortune so I researched it and found MH, which could do a similar thing much cheaper.”
The segments of the home are manufactured at the MH factory in Hamlin, Germany, then transported to the construction site and assembled by a four-strong team of specialist German construction workers. Within three-five days the home is watertight, lockable and secure, with the roof on, all windows in and the entrance door fitted. It can take a further 12 weeks to finish off the interior fixtures and fittings including plumbing and electrics. Everything must satisfy all the usual UK building regulations.
Lesley Gross of MH says construction can often be quicker than the official estimate: “The construction in West Hampstead, for example, could have been done in a day if the crane and lorry had been able to arrive at 7am and stay until 8pm because it’s reasonably small – though the structure is far from simple.”
Tucker could only get permission for the crane to operate from 10am until 3pm because it required temporary traffic lights and plenty of ensuing disruption – not least to one woman who complains her car is being blocked. MH offers to pay for a taxi to take her anywhere she wants, all day, but she is adamant she wants to use her own car – which means the huge lorry on which Finlayson’s house is currently sitting has to be moved back and forth, wasting more time.
MH has built four homes in the UK to date and has two more in the pipeline this year. “Off-site construction – we prefer not to call it prefab – is becoming more and more popular,” Gross explains. “Sometimes clients simply want a house built quickly, but we want them to come to us because they want an eco-home. We believe in it and it works, delivering energy cost savings to clients.”
Brigid Sundaram lives in the first ever MH home to be built in the UK, in Abingdon near Oxford. “We’ve been in for about a year and we really love it,” she says. “We wanted an eco-build but couldn’t find a UK company that could guarantee air-tightness. MH said we could build a 180 square metre, four- to five-bedroom home in two days, which was true, and now we have all the eco technology you could wish for. I wanted to prove to my teenage children that you can have all the mod-cons and still be eco-friendly.” About 65% of her hot water is now heated using solar panels.
The house is built using sustainable materials, including kiln-dried and planed timber from a managed forest in Germany. It is well insulated, using Fermacell insulation made of recycled chips, cellulose and water, which is then baked and rolled, making it sand- and fire-proof. The house is screwed together to become air-tight, making it highly energy efficient – and cheap to heat.
MH clients must know what they want long before the panels arrive on-site. “The manufacturers produce everything to your specification, including where you want windows, light fittings, plugs and cables; so once they have been built it’s too late to tamper with the panels,” Sundaram explains. “If you subsequently decide you want to run a tiny cable somewhere, you shouldn’t, because the home might not be airtight anymore. For some people it’s no problem to plan ahead and visualise how their home will look, but others need a lot of help to ensure they get it right.”
Finlayson employed his friend to design the home and Sundaram to project manage it, flying to Germany himself to pick the finishings he wanted, including floor tiles, toilets and colour schemes. There has been much discussion with his daughter, as he is predominantly building the house for her.
“I wouldn’t be able to afford a home here on my own,” Kirstie says, “so I’m really lucky that dad has been able to buy somewhere that allows me to remain in the area. I was so young when it all started that I thought it would just be an upgrade to the wendy house I had in the back garden. I had picked out all the tiles I wanted, which were all purple and sparkly as I was only 11, so in some ways it’s lucky it took as long as it did.”
Finlayson paid around £100,000 to do the ground work, including foundations, architectural plans and other preparatory costs, £100,000 for the house itself, and £100,000 to finish everything off, including plumbing, electricity and furnishings. That’s £300,000 on a road where family homes sell for double or triple that, making the project financially as well as environmentally sound. “I just wanted to have fun,” Finlayson said, as a friend greets him with a cry of “ah, here’s the West Hampstead exhibitionist”.
The house is scheduled to be habitable by October, though Kirstie hopes it will be ready by the end of August, at which point she will move in with her father initially. “I’ll get some kittens and settle in,” she says. “I might move out one day, but I’ll never sell it. It’s too important. It’s dad’s legacy to me.”
Posted in Energy, Energy efficiency, Environment, House News, House prices, Life and style, Money, News, Property, The Observer | Comments Closed
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
Proposed amendment would make landlords responsible for ‘greening’ properties or be prevented from renting them out
Landlords will be forced to refurbish hundreds of thousands of the UK’s most draughty and energy-inefficient homes or find themselves blocked from renting them out, under proposals unveiled on Tuesday.
The government has bowed to pressure from campaigners and brought forward an amendment to its energy bill, discussed by MPs yesterday, that would stop landlords from renting out homes that fell into the worst two bands of energy efficiency – F and G. The clause was missing from the original bill.
As a result, the estimated 680,000 rented homes falling into this category – about one-fifth of the total number of private rented residences – must be refurbished or taken off the market by 2018.
In addition, from 2016, private sector landlords will not be allowed to refuse “any reasonable request” to make energy efficiency improvements to their properties.
Landlords will be able to finance such improvements through loans taken out under the government’s “green deal” scheme, under which the cost of the loans will be paid for in installments on the energy bills at the property. The costs should be outweighed by the savings as less energy is used. “This means tenants will get a warmer home and cheaper bills, and the landlord gets the work done,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
However, campaigners said the government was moving far too slowly. Landlords will be able to continue renting out such homes for six years, which they said was too lenient, as the green deal will come into force next year. Dave Timms, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, pointed to research from the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health that found ill-health caused by people living in such sub-standard accommodation was costing the NHS about £145m a year.
The groups also criticised the government for not strengthening tenants’ rights to request energy efficiency improvements. “There is nothing in the bill to protect people from retaliatory eviction – where landlords force the tenants to leave if they ask for improvements,” said Timms.
About one-fifth of the people in the UK living in “fuel poverty” – without enough money to heat their houses – are living in private rented accommodation.
Posted in Consumer affairs, Energy, Energy bills, Energy efficiency, Environment, Green deal, guardian.co.uk, House News, Money, News, Property, Renting property, UK news | Comments Closed
Friday, May 20th, 2011
Jill Insley’s street is abuzz with pollarding tree surgeons. But the alternative would hit homeowners where it hurts: their pockets
Trees are a huge source of disagreement in my street. While half the homeowners appreciate the shade and cover for bird life provided by the 30-foot lime trees lining the road, the rest resent the stickiness the trees exude, which drips on their cars, and fear the roots will cause subsidence or heave.
And it’s that time of year when the disagreements come to the fore: birds are nesting, Springwatch is about to reappear on our television screens, and yet again there’s a distinct buzzing in the street outside. Not the happy hum of bees collecting pollen, but chainsaws stripping the limes of leaves and many of their finer branches.
Pollarding has long been used by councils to control the growth of trees in city streets. It is vital to prevent them out-growing the space they were planted in, and to prevent damage to housing and telephone wires. But rather than pollarding in the winter – the best time for the health of the trees and wildlife – in recent years some councils have started their process of slash and burn in the spring.
And we are not talking about removing a few branches. The men working in my street this week were denuding the trees of all their foliage. The limes went from being glorious, shady green giants to ugly stumps. This seems an extraordinary thing to do when we are being urged to cut carbon emissions.
Guy Barter, chief horticultural adviser for the Royal Horticultural Society, is not opposed to pollarding, pointing out that the tree usually grows back quickly, and that fast growing young shoots are actually better at capturing pollution.
But he adds that it would be better from the tree’s point of view to pollard in the winter when it is leafless and its resources have moved into the trunk and roots. “If you prune in the spring, they then take a long time to re-establish and they are prone to infection,” he says.
While pruning the trees to take out specific problematic branches might be an aesthetically better way of controlling growth – a process known as crown thinning – it costs much more. “There are a limited supply of tree surgeons who you would need to do this work. And the councils have a phenomenal number of trees in their streets. It would be fiendishly expensive,” Barter says.
He argues that stripping by cheap, unskilled labourers is better than the alternative councils might otherwise adopt: removing the trees altogether.
This would please several of my neighbours, who would rather live in a treeless zone. But would they also enjoy the knock-on effect on house prices?
Robin Chatwin, director of estate agent Savills in Wandsworth, south London , an area packed with tree-lined roads, says: “Houses in streets that are tree lined are definitely more appealing: it is one of the first things people see, which makes it extremely important and it adds to the kerb appeal. People also like it as they don’t necessarily feel that they are peering into their neighbours’ windows, they are actually looking at trees.
“In terms of added value I would say you would be looking at anywhere in the region of adding 4%-5% to the value of the property if you are in a tree-lined street.”
In a typical Wandsworth road, which has properties ranging in value from £500,000 to well in excess of £800,000, that means the removal of the trees could cost homeowners between £25,000 and £40,000. Which makes a few trips to the car wash to get rid of tree spit seem cheap.
However, it also makes you wonder about those owners currently trying to sell. Have their chances of getting a premium price been reduced now the street looks bleak and bare?
Do you relish trees in your street or wish they were compost? And does your local council pollard or has it taken the more nuclear option?
Posted in Blogposts, Carbon emissions, Carbon offsetting, Environment, guardian.co.uk, House News, House prices, Money, Property | Comments Closed
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Rising food prices have pushed up the price of arable land in parts of the UK, but life is tougher for livestock farmers
Agricultural land prices in Britain have hit record levels following the surge in global food prices, according to figures from Savills.
An acre of prime arable land in East Anglia is fetching up to £8,500 compared with around £3,000 in 2005, with demand driven by the dramatic increase in wheat prices over the past year. Last week, feed wheat was selling for nearly £200 a tonne, a 115% gain on the £93 a tonne price British farmers were achieving this time last year.
“There’s no recession in the arable land market at the moment, it’s really flying,” said Savills director Christopher Miles. “There is a lack of supply coming on to the market at the same time that farming has become a lot more profitable as commodity prices have shot up.”
But while the “grain barons” of East Anglia and Lincolnshire are enjoying record prices, livestock farmers in other regions are coming under pressure.
“Pig farmers are losing £20-£30 per finished animal, while dairy and beef producers are barely covering the cost of production,” said Ian Ashbridge of Farmers Weekly. A doubling in animal feed prices, plus rising fuel and haulage costs, have thrown many into losses.
Land used for livestock farms sells for much lower prices, with £3,000 an acre not uncommon in northern counties. The drought-like conditions across much of Britain are piling more pressure on livestock farmers, who rely on rainfall for grass much more than the drier eastern part of the country.
Savills expects a continued surge in the price of arable land, forecasting 10-15% growth in 2011, driving the highest cost per acre over £10,000. The forecast chimes with the latest Rural Land Market Survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which found prices rising steeply everywhere in the UK except Scotland.
Domestic farmers, agribusiness investors and cash-rich individuals have replaced the “lifestyle” buyers from the cities, plus the Irish and Danish, who helped drive the market before 2007. “They see it as a store of value in inflationary times, it’s gold with a cashflow,” said Miles.
Supply is tightest in East Anglia, where the number of acres for sale was less than half of that for the same time last year, said Savills. “This pushed up average values by 5% to £6,553 per acre, but where competition was strongest values achieved highs of £8,500 per acre for prime arable land in the region.”
Other land agents are not as bullish. Bidwells, one of the biggest agents in East Anglia, said a lot of land is beginning to come on to the market as foreign owners start to sell up.
“You just need to look in Farmers Weekly where the amount of land for sale last week was probably as much as they’ve had in the last eight weeks combined,” said land agent Ben Taylor. “People are seeing the prices being achieved and are now attempting to sell. I suspect future price growth won’t be quite as fast as some are predicting, although over the long term arable is going to continue to attract investors.”
He added that Britain currently has a two-tier market, with “arable very optimistic, livestock less so”, he said.
The rise in agricultural land and food prices is likely to put pressure on policymakers to cut subsidies to farmers. The current single farm payment scheme gives British farmers a subsidy of around £90-£100 an acre, but it is under review and many farmers are anxiously anticipating what will happen after 2012.
Some farmers argue that despite the soaring price of wheat, they have gained little because they forward-sold their supply when prices were lower.
“It wasn’t long ago that famers were getting around £110 a tonne for wheat, compared to a cost of production of £105-£110 a tonne, and they sold forward,” said Ashbridge. “In the meantime, things like diesel have jumped in price, while ammonium nitrate fertiliser, while below its peak, has still doubled in price.”
In reality, however, the price of agricultural land and food prices reflects global as much as domestic factors. Forward market prices for wheat remain very strong, despite a note last week from Goldman Sachs advising investors to take profits in the commodity sector. Wheat prices surged after a poor harvest last year in Russia and Ukraine prompted a temporary export ban.
Demand for meat products, fed on grain, is rising in China and other emerging markets, while in the US many farmers have switched from wheat production to making bioethanol.
Meanwhile, rural farmhouses remain firm in an otherwise weak residential property market. Rural specialists Carter Jonas said the average price of a farmhouse rose by 1% in the first quarter of 2011, compared with the 0.6% fall in the average house price in Britain over the same period.
Posted in Business, Commodities, Environment, Farming, Food, Food & drink industry, Goldman Sachs, House News, News, Property, The Guardian | Comments Closed
Friday, April 8th, 2011
Kevin McCloud won’t talk price. For him a dream property is all about enriching your life, not your wallet
It wasn’t the best morning to interview Kevin McCloud, presenter of Grand Designs and the nation’s architectural critic-in-chief. “The not so Grand Design,” screamed that day’s Daily Mail, featuring a Thames barge given an £80,000 makeover lying washed up and unfinished on a drab Essex beach. “A Grand Design for Failure,” said the Guardian.
McCloud is not familiar with failure. Grand Designs is in its tenth series, and its presenter is regarded as one of Channel 4′s most bankable assets. The TV programme has spawned a number of spin-offs, including a popular magazine and a home improvement show, Grand Designs Live.
He had a bad feeling about the Thames barge programme. “The project was compromised from the beginning. They were not prepared properly from the beginning and were relying on happenstance. I didn’t want to do that one from the start.” In that programme’s summing-up, he dubbed it a “floating scrapheap challenge” rather than a true Grand Design.
But disapproval is rare in McCloud’s bountiful vocabulary. The homilies delivered at the end of each programme aim to inspire rather than moralise, and in person, McCloud is no different. “There are plenty of others who delight in schadenfreude,” he says. “I’m not keen on shows that do that. What we do is set out to celebrate architecture and find projects that move the architectural canon on a bit.”
The idea for the interview is that McCloud will talk about what the average homeowner can do to their property to maximise its value. But despite fronting a home improvement show that counts Velux, Dulux and Miele among its chief sponsors, McCloud is almost evasive when it comes to talking about kitchen makeovers or loft extensions. The thinking man’s answer to Linda Barker, his passion for architectural innovation and style keeps him from telling you how to improve a mundane three-bed semi with a slap of paint and a bit of decluttering.
McCloud won’t talk price, but he will talk value, a rare enough commodity in the TV property shows. “I don’t look at what people do with their homes in terms of money, but the social and personal value of what they’re trying to do and achieve,” he says. “I never use the ‘P’ word. I’m not interested in just doing something up and selling on.”
His personal favourite Grand Design cost just £28,000. It was built by Sussex woodsman Ben Law from the trees in the woods in which it stands. Recycled newspaper insulates the floor and thick straw bales line the walls, covered in lime plaster. All the electricity comes from solar panels and wind turbines, while water is taken from a nearby spring. “He built the most delightful home and he built it all on budget. It’s the extraordinary personal values of people like Ben Law that matter. It’s not about half a million or three-quarters of a million pounds. It’s the brutality of those sorts of figures that stops people in their projects.”
Beautiful crafting, innovative design and highly personal touches are what makes a home improvement work, not piles of money, says McCloud. He points to Monty Ravenscroft’s home built on a sliver of land in Peckham on a small budget as one of the enduring stars of Grand Designs.
The plot was 80ft-long but in places just 13ft-wide, yet Ravenscroft squeezed a four-bed family home on to the site, at a cost of £170,000, plus £40,000 for the land. That compares with typical prices of £350,000-plus for family homes in the area. There are no external windows, but light floods in through a retractable glass roof. A double bed slides back to reveal a double bath underneath, while a toilet doubles up as a wet room. “He was on a very restricted budget but what his project showed was an extraordinary example of personal craft. It’s very easy, isn’t it, to slit open a fish and sell the eggs as caviar. What Monty did was miraculous.”
Forget what all the other property programmes tell you about improving your property to maximise its sale value. Do it for yourself, not for the market. “Ask yourself how long you are going to live there. My father died at the age of 73. Hell, that doesn’t give me an awful lot longer [he's 52]. How am I going to spend the next two decades? How am I going to be happy?
“Your home should be about enriching the daily experience. I don’t want to be too philosophical, but next week you might be under a bus. Figure out what you have, do you like it, do you really want it? Don’t try building a fantasy of how you should be.”
Behind the scenes, McCloud admits guiding some self-builders rather more than the programme always shows. “Look, I’m not the architect, but off camera I say, ring this person up for help and advice, or I really counsel someone not to put in, say, a swimming pool, at the expense of insulating the home. If I really like the people, I do tend to get involved.”
Twelve years after he started work on Grand Designs, McCloud says he remains as excited as the day he began. “Every series is different, every project is different. But the series is evolving – not least the issues around where people get the money from to do projects.”
He also has his own £18m grand project: a development of 109 new-build homes in Oxford. It will perhaps be a bigger challenge than most Grand Designs. McCloud’s company, Hab, is aiming to create low-cost, affordable and sustainable homes that embrace an eco-vision that includes car clubs, cycleways and food collectives.
McCloud calls it an “intelligent approach to regeneration”. But at the end of the project it will be – for once – the public who decide, not him.
McCloud’s do’s and don’ts of home renovation
• Grand Designs don’t happen without what McCloud believes to be the essential component of any home improvement project: an architect. “Expert help needn’t be impossibly expensive. Everyone deserves and needs to work with talented individuals. If you go to a good architect, your fees will pay for themselves.”
• Don’t design things as you go along. “We did a programme on a house in Spain, but sadly they didn’t invest in the design process. And then there was a conversion of a church in Tipton [in the West Midlands]. There was no architect, no design input, and it was pedestrian and clunky.”
• Don’t just add rooms but use the process to re-evaluate the layout of your home. “Rejig your rooms to how we live today rather than a hundred years ago.”
• Hire a project manager. “A big project will drain you night and day, but the ride need only be as hard or as easy as you make it … People have got to get over the fear of not being able to trust others. I come across people who are very successful in their own sphere, and really believe they can do it all themselves, but they can’t.”
• You can find cheap solutions. “Vision and ideas are free. But there are reasons why not everyone opts for glass balustrades. I’m a big fan of intelligent cheap solutions. There’s no reason for your imagination to be fettered by money.”
• Expect cost overruns. “If you are disciplined, add 20% to your budget. If you are not disciplined, then add 59%.”
• Don’t expect the bank to keep bailing you out. “We used to see people go back to the bank for bigger loans. Now that has stopped and projects have been mothballed.”
Be a winner with Guardian Money
Fifty free pairs of tickets are up for grabs for Grand Designs Live, at ExCeL in London’s Docklands from 30 April-8 May. There will be more than 500 exhibitors, seven distinct sections and a “Grand Village” hosting full-scale properties.
All you have to do is email money@guardian.co.uk, put Grand Designs Live in the subject line, and add your full address. The closing date is 1pm on 14 April. The Money team will select emails at random and let you know if you’re a winner!
If you’re not lucky enough to win a free ticket, you can buy tickets for £9 by booking by 14 April. That is a 50% saving off the weekend door price. Book at granddesignslive.com or call 0844 209 7349 and quote GUAR9
Posted in DIY, Environment, Features, Green building, Home improvements, House News, Interviews, Life and style, Money, Property, The Guardian | Comments Closed
|
|
|
|
|
|
